


Birth of a Widow

by POPP_Writing_Group



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: BAMF Natasha, Backstory, Brainwashing, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Remembers, F/M, Fighting, Guns, I am a shameless Buckynat shipper, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Knives, Murder, Natasha Feels, Natasha Needs a Hug, Natasha grows up in the Red Room, Past Brainwashing, Protective Natasha, Red Room, Red Room (Marvel), Shooting Guns, Training, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, Young Love. . . sorta? She has a crush, Young Natasha Romanova, assassinations, buckynat - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-09
Updated: 2017-11-09
Packaged: 2019-01-31 06:12:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12676002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/POPP_Writing_Group/pseuds/POPP_Writing_Group
Summary: Natalia Romanova, her childhood that never was, and the mysterious man who trained her.





	Birth of a Widow

**Author's Note:**

> Written by: Kayla

Three years old.  She misses Mommy and Daddy and doesn't understand what's happening.  She lives in a pattern.  Her wrist is handcuffed to the bed as she sleeps.

She is miserable.  There are a hundred other little girls with her, and the old Natalia would have called them "playmates".  But there are no playmates here, only cruelty and barked orders she must leap to obey.  

Then one day, the Head tells all of the girls there will be a special guest in the Red Room soon.  Natalia does not understand, but when she files into the training room with the others and sees the man sitting there on the floor, she is happy to see him.  He does not exude cruelty like the other grown-ups.

He tells them about knives.  For the next month, the one hundred three-to-five-year-old girls and the man talk about knives.  In the beginning, the man speaks in short words.  The next week, he begins speaking more.  The week after that, he smiles and becomes familiar with the girls, calling them by their names.  By the last week, the man is happy, and the girls are happy.  They ask him for his name, and he tells them, "Bucky Barnes," and looks confused afterwards.

The next day, the man is gone.

\---------------------------------

Seven years old.  She has killed now.  She can't think about it without crying, and crying is not allowed.  So Natalia learns to suppress her emotions.

Then  _ he  _ comes back.  There are only fifty of them now-- fifty seven-to-nine-year-old girls.  They file into the same room and the man tells them, in a cold, empty voice, about guns.

They practice now, and the man helps them, lifting their arms, steadying their fingers, holdin g up his strange metal hand as a target for their bullets.  He gives Natalia two pistols.  When another girl asks why she gets to practice with two, he answers, "Her hair," and says nothing else.

In the second week, the pattern continues.  The man speaks more freely, shows emotions, and encourages them.  Natalia likes him.  She shows him how close she can fire bullets to his face, often without any warning.  

In the third week, the man smiles.  The girls make it a game to see who can make him laugh.  Natalia wins.  The prize is ten minutes undisturbed practice with the man.  Natalia asks him to show her how to fire bullets even closer to his face.  

In the last week, the man doesn't want to leave.  The men at the door have to come in and get him.

Natalia realizes she will miss him.

\-----------------------------------

Ten years old.  She can speak thirty-four languages, but her English is atrocious.  She can mimic a French woman speaking Russian, a Spanish woman speaking Swahili, and a native of all those languages speaking them flawlessly, but her English is horrible.

The man is brought back.  Natalia can see that he is being  _ brought,  _ not coming of his own free will. She also knows that she hopes-- deep inside-- that he will remember her.

He does not.  He looks at the 20 girls standing in front of him-- the twenty ten-to-thirteen-year-old girls-- with a blankness in his eyes that makes Natalia scared. 

The man tells them about accents.  He focuses mostly on English.  Natalia realizes that he was brought here for  _ her,  _ but she says nothing except the vowel sounds he is having them repeat.  The man looks funny, opening his mouth and saying "Ahhh" in his deep, cracking voice and closing it to the sound of twenty high-pitched voices saying "Ahhh".

The second week, as they practice words, the man keeps looking at her.  He also begins saying words in English like "Captain" and "train" and "war".  The girls repeat them after him, unable to understand why his brow crinkles in confusion after he says the words.

The third week, he asks them questions in English, and they answer in English.  He asks one girl, "What is your favorite food?" and she answers, "Soup."  He asks another, " What color is the sky?" and she answers, "Grey."  He asks a third, "Who is your friend?" and she answers, 'No one."

When it is Natalia's turn, he stares at her a long time before whispering, "What is your name?"

She says, "Natalia Romanova."

On the last week, the man takes her aside and talks to her frantically in English.  Natalia cannot keep up, but his voice is so pleading she tries hard to follow along.  The man is saying, "Don't let them take me back.  Don't.  Don't.  Please, Natalia.  Please.  Help me.  Oh, God, help.  My name is James Buchanan Barnes. . ."

Then the men in black storm in and pull him away.

\---------------------------------

Thirteen years old.  She can speak English fluently now, speak it in whatever accent she likes, but accents are far past her now.  She has had a mission.  A small mission.  Only the assassination of an unimportant political leader who was getting too nosy.  But the thrill it gives her to be out, free, using her skills-- it is wonderful.

But the Head is displeased with her performance.  Natalia is told that her assassination was "crude" and that she had left tracks.  Tracks that could, if not properly handled, be traced back to the Red Room.

Natalia expects punishment.  Natalia receives a gift instead.

The man looks through her, but she is not put off by this.  Instead of being trained with her age group-- which has dwindled down to merely three girls, Natalia the youngest of them--  _ she  _ will be trained by the man.  Her.   _ Only  _ Natalia.

She is old enough now to come to a startling conclusion:  The man has not grown any older since she saw him last.  If anything, he looks  _ exactly  _ the same.

He talks to her about having finesse on assassinations, but his cold, dead voice only brings back the memory of him begging her not to let them take him away.  For the first week, she listens to him talk in his cracked voice and nods along in the right moments.  But inside, she is aching for the second week, when the cold voice will be chipped away to reveal the person underneath.

The second week comes.  The man looks at her now, looks at her and wrinkles his forehead in confusion.  He begins talking  _ to _ her instead of  _ at  _ her.  He still only speaks the words he has been brought here to tell her, but his face is filled with struggle.

Natalia remembers what he had said his name was the last time she saw him.  She begins to think of him as  _ James.   _

The third week, the man-- James-- does not follow his pattern and begin to smile.  Instead, as Natalia tells him how she had had to kill her classmates in order to survive, he cries.

Natalia is confused.  Crying is not allowed.  If you feel the urge, you punch something or bite your lips until blood comes out.  But James is not in pain, and yet he cries.  

The last week, he asks her what her name is again, and Natalia, without thinking, tells him she has already told him that.  James looks miserable and tells her he can't remember.  He tells her that when he leaves, they will do something to wipe from his mind all memories of the past month.

Natalia tells him not to worry.  If he comes back, she will help him remember.  

He hugs her.  This time, when the men in black drag him away, he fights.

\------------------------------

Seventeen years old.  She hates the Red Room and longs to go out on her own.  She is given tests.  She passes them.  She is ordered to kill people, and she does.  She gives herself a name, in a fit of rebellion against the Head's mantra that she "has no place in the world."  She performs every task given to her to make sure she is a cold, emotionless machine, capable of killing and lying and nothing else.  But she refuses to be a slave to the Red Room, and the Head can see that.  The Head can also see that the day is coming when Natalia will strike out on her own, regardless of whether she has their permission or not.

They have James brought back.  Natalia can't imagine why, until she realizes that, even with all the things the Head knows about her, all her secrets that are not secrets anymore, even with all of those, the Head still does not know she holds a place in her heart for James.  

She resolves to keep it a secret.

When James looks through her with his empty gaze, she remembers the promise her thirteen-year-old self had made:   _ I'll help you remember. _

She doesn't know how to keep that promise.  Not when this is likely the last time she'll ever see him.  But she knows she has to try.

There is something inside of her that tells her she has to try for a different reason than simply keeping her promise.  But she tries hard to stuff that something down.

For the first week, as James talks about the fine points of espionage and teaches her several things about physical combat she finds very helpful, Natalia simply touches him.  In little ways, small touches-- a hand on his, a shoulder bumped, her knee touching his as they sit.  He begins stammering, his cold shell cracking each time she does something.  Natalia is excited.  James has never been anything but empty the first weeks.  She touches him more-- brushing a strand of hair behind his ear, leaning against him briefly, sitting close.  When the Head questions her about it, she says she is practicing her distraction skills.  The Head smiles an unpleasant smile and tells her to go ahead.

But Natalia knows she wouldn't do that to James.  She couldn't anyway, not when he's an emotionless shell like he is during the first weeks.  But distracting men with her pretty face is a dirty trick, and. . . somehow, she just doesn't want to do that to him.

The second week, he begins talking to her.  She listens as he gradually stops talking about espionage and instead tells her about when he was eight and he and his friend built a pillow fort and his friend inhaled some dog hair and had an allergic reaction and his face got red and puffy but he still wanted to sleep in the fort that night.

"He was a punk," James says fondly.  Natalia laughs.  She does that a lot more now.  It makes James' eyes light up and look alive.

She asks him, on the third week, if he remembers her.  He stares at her a long time before his eyes drift to her red hair.  

"You were the little one with hair like fire," he says.  "The brave one."  He touches her hair hesitantly.  "N-Natalia."

She finds herself smiling.  "James."

His eyes go wide.  "What. . . what did you say?"

"Your name is James Buchanan Barnes."  She whispers this so that the Head will not hear her and send in the men to take James away.  

He makes a sharp noise that sounds like a sob.  "That's right.  That's  _ right." _

"I promised to help you remember, James."

Now he does sob.  He bends his head down between his knees.  "Thank you.   _ Thank you, Natalia." _

They talk every day of the last week, and Natalia can't help beginning to feel her emotions sneaking up on her at the least opportune moments.  The way James looks at her is almost too much to bear.

And on the day that she gives in and admits to herself that she loves him, the feeling she has, if she had allowed them to stay more than a few seconds, be called joy.

On the last day of the last week, she kisses him.  And when he kisses her back, Natalia doesn't block her emotions. 

The happiness only lasts until the Head bursts into the room, followed by several men in black.  Before Natalia can think  _ It was only a matter of time, how was I so stupid--  _ they kick her brutally to the side and surround James, beating him savagely and forcing him to the ground.  They clamp his metal arm in a binder and start to drag him away.

Natalia leaps to her feet and tries to chase after them, only to be pulled back and tripped to the ground by the Head.  She gets up again, her eyes blurry with pain, seeing James disappear out the door, desperate to get him back, but the Head grabs her hair and yanks her backwards.  Natalia thinks wildly about fighting back, but she hesitates for a second.   _ Don't disobey the Head  _ is ingrained into her.  It only takes that split second for the Head to strike a disabling blow to the back of her neck, and she collapses, unable to move.

"Stupid girl," the Head hisses into her ear.  "That man is an  _ asset  _ for H.Y.D.R.A., a tool for them to use!  He is not for you to have!"

"I didn't have him," Natalia gasps, blinking furiously through the pain.  "We had each other.  I loved him."

She feels a strange sense of freedom at admitting this, a freedom that pierces through the blinding physical pain and terrible loss.  She loved him.  The Red Room does not own her.  The Red Room had not destroyed her.  She loved him.

"Love is for  _ children,"  _ the Head spits.  

Natalia feels darkness swirling into her head.  She clings to the one thought that seems to make sense as it creeps into her vision.

_ I loved him.  I love him.  James Buchanan Barnes. _

"For children," the Head repeats, but the fading voice sounds frightened now.  

_ I love him,  _ Natalia tells herself as she slides into oblivion.   _ And I will escape the Red Room. _

 


End file.
